On Sept. 5, around 6 a.m., Williams was riding his bike that allegedly didn’t have a safety light. According KTNV, when two officers, Benjamin Vazquez, 27, and Officer Patrick Campbell, 28, tried to stop him, he took off and eventually began running on foot.

The officers were caught him and told Williams to get on the ground. While being cuffed, Williams told the officers he couldn’t breathe. The Las Vegas Sun reports an officer was heard telling him: “Yeah, because you’re tired of (expletive) running.”

Williams was allegedly straddled by one of the officers, who had his knee pinned against Williams. “Pressure on your butt, that’s all,” said one of the officers. Williams continues to complain about not being able to breathe.

“As they were taking him to the patrol car, Williams appeared to pass out. Officers called for assistance and the Las Vegas fire department arrived several minutes later,” KTNV reports.

The 50-year-old later died hospital. Williams was armed and the police claim drugs were on him.

The family is saying the death was unjustified. At a press conference, his daughter said, “Byron Lee Williams did have people who cared about him.” His niece also added, “He was loved, he was a changed man, it needs to be known that he changed his lifestyle.”

At the press conference, where body cam footage was showed, Asst. Sheriff Hank decided to focus on Williams’ “extensive criminal history.” He also claimed he had “absconded from electronic monitoring and police were looking for him.”

50-year-old Byron Lee Williams does at Valley Hospital after he was apprehended by police for riding a bike without safety lights early Thursday morning. pic.twitter.com/qJKoqps862

Jeffrey E. Thompkin, who is identified as Williams’ stepson, claimed the footage the family saw was “doctored” and “that up to 40 minutes had elapsed between the traffic stop and images that he said showed his stepfather lifeless on the concrete, meaning that he didn’t die on the way to the hospital, as the family was told.”

The officers were placed on routine leave as the family is asking for the investigation to continue. See the press conference below:

10. Alton Mills

The life story of Chicagoan Alton Mills shows why we need to pass the #FirstStepAct. Alton, who received a pardon from President Obama in 2015, was destined to spend his life in prison. He’s now a contributing member of society. #cjreformpic.twitter.com/QZxvYkmK6t

Continue reading Black People Who Got More Time Than Paul Manafort For Doing Less

Black People Who Got More Time Than Paul Manafort For Doing Less

Updated March 13, 2019, 1:20 p.m., EDT
Paul Manafort received a sentence totaling seven and one-half years in prison after a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ordered him on Wednesday to serve 43 months on top of the 47-month sentence that he received on March 7.
Also on Wednesday, Manafort was charged with mortgage fraud, conspiracy and other counts in a new indictment in New York City.
https://twitter.com/ap/status/1105872138215612416?s=12
Original Story
The U.S. has a long history of imposing harsher prison sentences for Black and brown people. Paul Manafort is the most recent example. The president's criminal crony faced up to 24 years in prison under federal guidelines but got off with a light sentence instead.
See Also: Twitter Is Outraged That Paul Manafort Gets Less Prison Time Than Crystal Mason
Manafort, who served as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman, was sentenced on Thursday to 47 months in prison for cheating on his taxes and bank fraud. Adding insult to injury for those who were looking to see justice served, Manafort could still receive a pardon from the president. His conviction stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The Washington Post published a report in 2017 detailing how Black men are sentenced to more prison time for the same crime that white people commit. According to NPR, "the average sentence is nearly 20 percent longer for black men than white men."
And the disparity doesn't only exist among men, as shown with the case of Crystal Mason, a Black woman in Texas who got a five-year prison sentence for the offense of voting in an election.
It was that type of racial double standard surrounding Manafort's sentencing sparked a good deal of outrage. Especially when U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, a white man, expressed some sympathy for the 69-year-old Republican operative and consultant who has political roots in the highest levels of politics, which includes working for the presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
“He’s lived an otherwise blameless life,” Ellis said of Manafort’s offenses, adding that he’s “earned the admiration of a number of people.”
Manafort was one of the 34 people and three companies that Mueller has criminally charged, so far, as a result of the probe into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
There’s still another chance that Manafort, who was originally charged with conspiracy against the United States, could get a longer sentence that many people say he deserves. He faces another judge next week in the case in D.C., in which he could be handed a prison term of up to 10 years.
Still, Manafort apparently has a get out of jail free card up sleeves, thanks to President Trump.
All of which leads us to highlight the following examples of Black people who got harsher sentences for doing less than the treasonous Manafort.